Guitar solo

I

IsmaelTapiaII

New member
Hey, everyone,
I've been working on this song for a while, and I decided that it was finally time to sit down and work out the guitar solo. And here it is. I'm pretty happy with both the actual music and with the recording, although, obviously, it's far from perfect.

I'd really appreciate any comments or suggestions you guys have on any aspect of this thing, from the guitar tone to my playing to anything--your criticism can only help me improve, and I really appreciate it.

Just so you know, I'm a guitarist and, although I played both the bass and the drums on this, I can't really play either. So those parts definitely suck.

Anyway, here's the file:


Thanks for your comments!
 
Not much I can really say, except that you need to eq the bass a bit and give it some definition. I can't really hear it. Of course I am on headphones, so that might be the culprit.

The playing is pretty good. Did you actually play the drums, or is it a drum program? Not bad sounding...
 
As far as the bass, like I said, I'm not a bassist, and I haven't recorded the bass too much before. I hear what you're saying about it being kinda hard to hear. What would you suggest specifically that I do to it with the EQ?

Here's the story on the drums. I hate the way that programmed drums sound, but I live in an apartment and hadn't played the drums before, so I didn't want to buy real drums. So I bought the cheapest electronic drum set I could find, just so that I could practice without disturbing my neighbors and play along to stuff. So the drums are sampled, but the execution is live.
 
IsmaelTapiaII said:
As far as the bass, like I said, I'm not a bassist, and I haven't recorded the bass too much before. I hear what you're saying about it being kinda hard to hear. What would you suggest specifically that I do to it with the EQ?

Here's the story on the drums. I hate the way that programmed drums sound, but I live in an apartment and hadn't played the drums before, so I didn't want to buy real drums. So I bought the cheapest electronic drum set I could find, just so that I could practice without disturbing my neighbors and play along to stuff. So the drums are sampled, but the execution is live.
Click to expand...
OK...

I am mainly a bassist who happens to play a little guitar. Here is what I do to get my bass to stand out:

Compression: use it sparingly, mainly to bring out the nuances of the playing.

With eq, I tend to cut a little bit from the low end (around 200hz) and boost very little above 3000.

Also, tracking is vital to a good bass tone. I use a DI box or go straight from my mixer into my MR-8. Don't do any eq on the mixer when you track.

I sometimes use an A/B splitter and mic my bass cab and run a DI track at the same time. I will alternate bringing the DI track under the amped track, or vice versa, whichever will give me the sound I am after.

Since you are in a situation where you can't get too loud, I'd recommend getting a good DI box. You can get some amazing tones from them.
 
What I really want from the bass is for it to have a really good low-end sound, but I don't care if the attack or anything is heard too much. I pretty much just want it to be something you almost feel more than hear, if that makes any sense. I can't really think of a good way to describe it other than that. Any ideas on how I can get that sound?

Any other ideas or suggestions?
 
Sounds good to me. Only nit is that the little fill at 0:38 sounds like it wants to be a fast run, but it sort of stutters. But that's very minor. The tone seems to stand out against the mix pretty well.
 
I like it.

Snare has good tone and articulation. The kick is masked somewhat by the bass gtr.

Bass gtr needs more definition IMO to have more of a low freq pulse.

The lead guitar line sounds very good. Nice touch on the gtr. My only suggestion there would be to watch the pitch of the bent notes... they're flat some of the time.
 
Thanks for the kind words and comments, everyone.

I've gone back and listened to this a couple more times, and I definitely agree that the bends are flat, especially towards the end when I do the four consecutive bends on the same note. I'll watch that when I record this for the actual song.

The more I listen to it, the more I agree that the bass needs more definition and punch. I want it to be noticeable, not hidden like it is here. The problem is that it just doesn't have the punch I was going for, but I also didn't do much to the track just because I don't really know how to handle bass, so I'll take the suggestions here and see what I can come up with. I'll definitely post the whole thing when it's done.
 
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